GONE DARK by Ryan Steck - Review
Matthew Redd's latest outing is your next Must-Read book of the summer!
Bring on book number two of three for Ryan Steck in 2025! Steck has been busy this year, first with TED BELL’S MONARCH releasing in March. The latest in the Alex Hawke series saw a threat to the British Crown. This swashbuckling thriller was excellent… read the review here! Now Ryan Steck brings us the fourth installment in the Matthew Redd series, one of my favorites and one of the best new series to hit bookshelves recently.
The Matthew Redd series is one I have quickly latched onto and been reading since the release of book one! Given the trajectory of how OUT FOR BLOOD concludes, I was curious how Ryan would plunk Matty back into action. GONE DARK finds the perfect foundation and provides not only a thrilling ride, but a heartfelt experience that had me turning each page.
Introduced in the first book of the series FIELDS OF FIRE, Matthew Redd is a former Marine Raider, an elite warrior for the U.S. Military. Now out of the service and making a life in Montana with his expecting wife and child, Redd has picked up rebuilding the ranch that his stepfather had left him. Unfortunately, with wildfires consuming all vegetation and life in its path, the smokejumpers are hard at work to prevent further hell.
Entrusted by the local Sheriff Blackwood, Redd has gone from fighting a billionaire’s conspiracy to living the ranching life and aiding the local Sheriff with training and head of the local search and rescue team. When a team of Smokejumpers has gone dark, Redd is requested to search for the missing team. But soon he trudges through the ash, only to stumble upon several dead bodies belonging to the smoke jumping team.
Quickly Redd finds himself caught between the crosshairs and the race is on to evade the gunfire and the raging fire. But what further complicates his survival is a boy named Jack and his Buzz Lightyear toy. Redd must navigate the fiery terrain and keep Jack safe.
Meanwhile, Matthew’s wife Emily may only be a short while from giving birth. She continues her shifts at the hospital providing healthcare. But things quickly head south when a patient she knew dies from a drug overdose. It isn’t long before Emily is investigating the tragedy and finds herself marked for death. Exposing a conspiracy is such a Redd thing to do, and both Matty and Emily are brilliant at it!
Ryan Steck is truly at home in this series. A neo-western, similar to the likes of Yellowstone, Matthew Redd shines and Steck crafts an engaging story. While the previous three books were fantastic, there is no senior slide or fourth book fatigue. No, Matthew Redd is back in his best outing yet!
Steck weaves a thrilling story that involves all of the series characters we have come to love. From Emily to Gavin to Mikey, each has a role that feels not only organic to their character but also the progression of the story. Meanwhile, Matthew Redd and Jack lay the groundwork for not only the main punctuation of the story, but these two are the epitome of a beating heart. Each interaction is a fresh pump, followed by an intensity that leaves you on the edge of your seat as the action hits a break pointing that has your eyes scanning each word as fast as possible to thumb page after page until the end hits like a runaway train.
Ryan Steck nailed it with GONE DARK. A perfect culmination of Matthew Redd’s drive and perception of life, that connection with Jack is utter brilliance! We are only halfway through the year, but GONE DARK is without a doubt a contender for the book of the year. From the thrilling story to the danger lurking in the shadows for Matty and the crew, Steck crafts the action and builds that emotional arc, one that leaves its best moment for the ending and without a gunshot or punch thrown. GONE DARK knows when to be gritty and knows when to peel the layers back and celebrate the victories.
GONE DARK by Ryan Steck has earned a five out of five!
GONE DARK by Ryan Steck releases June 17th! Order your copy now!
In this pulse-pounding thriller, former Marine Raider Matthew Redd, “a force to be reckoned with” (Jack Carr) and “the go-to man in a bad situation” (Brad Taylor), must face his greatest fears and figure out how to escape when the one way out goes up in flames.
Matthew Redd doesn’t go looking for trouble. But this time, it’s found him anyway… and he’s not the only one in the crosshairs.
Late-summer wildfires are a fact of life in Montana. But as an inferno nears Wellington, Matthew Redd gets the unusual call that a team of smoke jumpers has suddenly gone dark. As head of the county’s fledgling search and rescue team, Redd drops into the fire zone and finds way more than he bargained for: a killer has taken out the smoke jumper team along with two civilians, and only a terrified young boy is left as witness. Redd and little Jack narrowly escape the raging fire, and Redd calls in Gavin Kline, now acting director of the FBI, to investigate the bigger forces at play.
That afternoon, during one of her last clinic shifts before the birth of her second child, Emily Redd loses a young patient to an overdose. Fed up with yet another loss to the opioid crisis―this one a former schoolmate and a wounded veteran―Emily tracks down and confronts the retired doctor responsible for feeding her patient’s deadly addiction.
Hours later, when their home is attacked, Redd and Emily wonder which of them kicked a hornet’s nest―or if they’ve both stumbled onto pieces of a much bigger puzzle. As the fire closes in, they follow the connections from a corrupt doctor and a local opioid supplier all the way to a murdered whistleblower for a Big Pharma giant. As Redd’s concern for young Jack grows, those who want to silence him forever hunt him down. Redd will do whatever it takes to protect the boy and his family . . . even if it means he’ll have to outrun an inferno and come face-to-face with his greatest fear.
Gone Dark is the 4th gripping thriller in the Matthew Redd series:
Fields of Fire (Matthew Redd #1)
Lethal Range (Matthew Redd #2)
Out for Blood (Matthew Redd #3)
Also available: Redd Christmas, a Matthew Redd novella
As previously mentioned, Ryan Steck has a third book releasing this year. Co-authored with Simon Gervais, the pair bring the heat in THE SECOND SON, which will be released November 11th! Stay tuned for that review in the future!
As for now, please enjoy both MONARCH and GONE DARK!
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